Subscribe via Email

Enter your email to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

video: 1,000 bananas on a Yuba Mundo cargo bike

Recently Dave Deming put his Yuba Mundo cargo bike to the test by attempting to haul about 1,000 bananas on it– about 400 lbs of them.

The tagline for the Yuba Mundo bike is “affordable mobility”, which translates
to a cargo bike that starts at $1100 and is built to haul 440 lbs of cargo.

He concludes that this weight was about 100 pounds too much for him to carry. His conclusion mirrors what the Bikes-at-Work Trailer folks recommend. ( My personal record for cargo is about 225 pounds)

What Dave should have said is that 400 pounds is about 100 pounds too much to carry by bike unassisted. Adding electric assist to a bike is a practical way to extend the cargo capacity and range.

I keep hearing and stories about electric cargo bikes as minivan replacements. Here’s one example from Portland of a mom with her two kids and the groceries, cruising with a bike that’s upgraded with an XtraCycle longtail extension and Stokemonkey electric assist.

Aftering adding electric assist to a Yuba Mundo, it’s been used to haul three adults three plus an additional cargo trailer:

You can see an electric Yuba Mundo in action in brief clip about a bike-powered music festival:

Elise, who filmed the banana video is another cargo biking mother. She uses a Madsen to carry three children 6 miles home from day care. She describes the bike in the following video, (although it unfortunately includes no shots with the three kids).

The bike shop which sponsored the banana stunt, Cycle 9, happens to specialize in cargo bikes and electric upgrade kits. Their website is updated regularly with new video blog posts about related topics. Check out the Cycle 9 website if you interested to explore further.